In order to figure out if I can upgrade to Drupal 6, I have to review the compatibility of the following modules I use under Drupal 5:
- Bad-Behavior
- account_reminder
- acl
- actions
- akismet
- amazon_filter
- atom
- backup
- biblio
- captcha
- cck
- copyright
- countdown
- creativecommons_lite
- custom_breadcrumbs
- custom_links
- date
- fckeditor
- freelinking
- globalredirect
- google_analytics
- gsitemap
- htmlcorrector
- image
- imagefield
- img_assist
- import_typepad
- importexportapi
- inactive_user
- inline
- ip2cc
- jquery_interface
- jquery_update
- messagefx
- multiflex37
- nodewords
- nofollowlist
- onlinestatus
- openidurl
- path_redirect
- pathauto
- porterstemmer
- recaptcha
- recent_changes
- relatedlinks
- safarisearch
- service_links
- sifr
- site_map
- smartypants
- spam
- sparkline
- systeminfo
- tac_lite
- tagadelic
- taxonomy_access
- taxonomy_manager
- tbcheck
- technorati
- textile
- token
- trackback
- update_status
- upload_image
- upload_preview
- views
- views_bonus
- votingapi
- workflow
- xmlsitemap
- zeitgeist
Not all of these are essential, of course. Heck, they aren’t even all enabled. But it will still take some time to review what modules I need and don’t need to make the site run in the way I’m accustomed to it running. Still, the urge to throw caution to the wind and upgrade blindly is certainly there.
The Achilles heel of Drupal, as I perceive it, is the core philosophy of “the drop is always moving.” Although I can appreciate that the software needs to break with tradition at times, the compatibility rat race is really painful.
I run a site. I want/need modules to make that happen. The modules are written for specific versions of Drupal. Each major version of Drupal has new module requirements. There’s no guarantee any module will be upgraded to work with the next version of Drupal. Old modules don’t even run in a reduce functionality state. It’s rather aggravating; there are modules I wanted to run that haven’t been upgraded since Drupal 4.6 or 4.7, so they weren’t even compatible with 5.x. The only recourse may be to upgrade the modules yourself if you are that interested in them, as I haven’t seen a bounty to upgrade a module work yet.
Of course, it’s worse if the module isn’t even hosted in Drupal’s contributed module repository (aka “contrib”).
Unfortunately, I’m not at a point where I feel I can contribute much to making the modules compatible with Drupal 6. Most of that work requires coding PHP and testing on a non-production site, two tasks I’m ill-equipped for right now.